The Kurdish problem and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terror that has led to the deaths of thousands over decades; the inability to reach social consensus among social layers; the alienation of religious people from the system by labeling them as reactionary; the denigration of the nation’s political choices, treating people as minors who are unable to make correct decisions; the consecration by these intellectuals of all forms of oppression and policies implemented by the regime, and the fact that they always support actions by the state (or the state bureaucracy) instead of criticizing them at all; all of these facts are sufficient to support the argument that the dominant intellectuals in Turkey are still miles away from being truly intellectual.Can we make any another attempt to explain why the conventional intellectuals do not currently take sides with democracy, failing to criticize the state bureaucracy’s attempts to shut down a political party that assumed office through purely democratic means and has perfect legitimacy in political and democratic terms, instead lending full support to this attempt? The stance adopted by these intellectuals, who refrain from opposing the state bureaucracy -- which is the true source of power -- but think that opposition means resistance to a political power that tries to minimize the effects of bureaucratic despotism toward the investigation into the Ergenekon terrorist organization seems to lend support to the following argument. Moreover, this is not a new development.
Perhaps we must once again read Fikret Başkaya’s 1991 book “Paradigmanın İflası” (Bankruptcy of Paradigm), in the light of current events and see how this book positions Turkish intellectuals with respect to intellectualism. This book, in connection with which Başkaya was sentenced to 20 months in prison on charges of “separatist propaganda,” merits being read anew and several times in order to understand Turkey in a correct manner.
“The duty of the intellectual is to fight against distorted truth,” Başkaya says, continuing, “And to show the true face of the state, which tries to impose the distorted (ideological) form of truth on society, and of the ‘intellectuals’ who are employed by the state to this end. An intellectual is the one who upholds truth against groups who prefer obscurity and will be injured by the revelation of truth; in show, an intellectual is the person who lends support to unearthing of the truth. In this regard, we can say that the intellectual’s duty is to dig out the myths created by the ruling groups -- read this as Kemalists -- and their men and to demystify what is mystified.”
The recent efforts by the so-called intellectuals are to re-circulate the official discourse and actions formulated in the early years of the republic and accelerate the mystification efforts by using such books as “Şu Çılgın Türkler” (These Crazy Turks), aren’t they?
We must underline the following sentences from Başkaya’s book: “In every class-based society, the ruling classes -- it is misleading to take the political power or the government as the ruling class, rather, the ruling class is the one which may undermine the government when needed -- tend to produce ‘legends’ or ‘myths’ in order to conceal the ongoing exploitation, to legitimize this exploitation and oppression, and to give the impression that the status quo cannot be changed. The continuation of the established system relies on the continuation of ideological fuzziness and dominance of myths. An intellectual is the person who unearths what the ruling classes attempt to conceal, who rejects acceptance of the distorted version of the truth, who revolts against the ‘system of social values’ imposed by the ruling classes and who takes it as his/her primary objective to refuse the dominant ideology and official history and reveal the discrepancy between what really happened and its ‘official version.’”
To Başkaya, Turkish intellectuals have always, unfortunately, been manufacturing lies and living with lies. “Although they claim to teach society rationalist thought, they themselves manufactured myths more than anyone else and idolized Mustafa Kemal [Atatürk],” he says.
If these so-called intellectuals were able to act fairly and conscientiously and withstand injustice, oppression, tyranny, violations and discrimination, would Turkey still be crippled with today’s issues?
